


Trigger

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [5]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices





	Trigger

**Title:** Trigger  
 **Series:** [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/79902.html).  
 **Author:** vegawriters  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Hints of Grissom and Sara  
 **Rating:** M for adult themes  
 **Timeframe:** Season four: _Homebodies_  
 **A/N:** As has been discussed by many in my circle over the last few months, Sara’s drinking in season four didn’t just come out of nowhere. Nor did her anger in season five. And it was not because Grissom rejected her. We all seem to be in consensus that while the explosion in season 3 was the initial trigger, _Homebodies_ set her off. Thank you to kittyknighton for the beta.  
 **Disclaimer:** I won't lie. If CBS were to hire me, I'd take down all the fic faster than you can blink. But since right now I am a struggling writer, it can be understood I don't make a dime from this. I do however enjoy doing it and enjoy exploring character while I do. But, CSI and its characters all belong to the powers that be.

 **Summary** : _She could sleep later. Later, after she’d pulled her rain soaked clothes from her body and tossed them into the trash, unable to ever wear them again for fear of bringing that karma back into some other teenager’s life._

For all the times she’d sat in her car at a crime scene, staring at the mess of tape and cops and the lights bouncing off the dark of the sky, she’d never allowed herself a tear. Not when Brenda’s hand had been pulled away by the social worker, not when Pamela had been declared a legal vegetable, not when Gil had grabbed her and thrown her against the side of the car after the Strip Strangler case. No, tears were for when she was alone in the shower, pouring lemon juice over her hair, washing away not just the images of the cases but the smells and the touch and the taste of decomp that lingered on the tongue longer than any scent in the nose. Tears were for her moments of weakness, her time alone with her journals and her memories of not quite disinfected hospital rooms and latex gloved doctors stitching up yet another souvenir from her father’s belt or her mother’s voices. Tears were for the dark moments when she bolted upright, reaching for ghosts that tortured her dreams, reminding her that always, she was less than. She was worthy only of the wandering eye of abusive men and distant women. She was not worthy of her education or her success or even her survival. She was worthy only of the darkness and the single tear she would let escape, as she did now, watching the cops and her colleagues get to work.

She’d promised to protect Suzanna. She’d held the girl’s hand before the lineup and stood there when she couldn’t bring herself to write down the damned number of the guy who had pinned her down and assaulted her and now those same men had taken her, taken her away and for the first time in her life, Sara was glad she’d never reported her own rape. She was glad she’d allowed her foster home to think her some wild, unmanageable child that drank herself to a pregnancy at fourteen. Because she had kept her mouth shut, she’d lived. She knew full well that rapists threats were carried through every day, but tonight, a sixteen year old little girl had been struck down because she’d dared to say something. She’d dared to think for herself and try and break the cycle and now Suzanna Kirkwood wouldn’t even see her seventeenth birthday and at least Sara had that. Her cowardice had given her that. For a moment, her hand rested on her abdomen, feeling the phantom kick of a child she’d never wanted but that she mourned every day. The baby would be almost eighteen now. The baby. Her daughter. She couldn’t help but wonder which parent she looked like and if she was happy and healthy and away from the cycle Sara still hadn’t quite managed to break.

A knock and she looked over and there at the window to the passenger door was Gil and Sara unlocked the door and he climbed in and without a word, took her hand. How he could be so cold and distant in one breath and so calming and connected in the next still baffled her, but she welcomed his understanding. She knew this case haunted him too. He didn’t know the details. He knew she’d been raped as a teenager but she also knew he suspected it was like most teens, an unfortunate date rape ignored by local authorities. She did not have the courage, even sitting in the car at Suzanna Kirkwood’s death scene, to tell him the truth. What would it do but dredge up old demons she had no desire to dance with?

“Go home,” he said quietly. “Go on home. You worked a double anyway and you should go home.”

Looking not at him but at the Kirkwoods, who still stood at their door, watching the body of their daughter be processed into the coroner’s van, Sara shook her head. “No. No. I’ll sleep later. They deserve to have both of us on this case. We pressed the issue, Gil. I took her to the hospital. You talked to the family. And like it or not, we’re involved.”

“Sara …”

She glanced at him and wanted to kiss away the gentle expression in his eyes. Instead she slipped out of the car again. She could sleep later. Later, after she’d pulled her rain soaked clothes from her body and tossed them into the trash, unable to ever wear them again for fear of bringing that karma back into some other teenager’s life. Later, she’d pour a drink and curl up on the couch and will sleep to come while she stared blankly at the DVDs of some stupid TV show she’d bought on a whim because she was tired of only music to keep her company at home but inevitably the hospital drama would feature a teen mother or abused woman and so she’d stare at the nothingness and will time to pass until she could safely return to the lab without fear of being reprimanded for the time she spent there and not at home. Once, she’d have gone to Gil’s and they’d have exhausted their demons in each other’s arms, but not now. Not since he’d turned down her dinner invitation after the lab explosion. Not since she told him to figure himself out and since then, the only reminder of the life they’d once shared was in long, lingering looks over his desk and in the touch of his hand on hers in the car. She needed to assert herself. He needed to make a decision. And so her security blanket was now unattainable but in their separation from each other, she’d come to learn why it was that people sought out partnership. It wasn’t for the daylight hours but the nights, when demons could only be kept at bay by the touch of another.

The slam of the car door kicked her professional side back into gear and she walked back under the tape and knelt to process the ground under Suzanna’s body. Shell casings. Blood. All at risk of being washed away by the rain that grew stronger with every passing moment and lessened any chance of them ever catching the men who had done this. But she could go through the motions and log her evidence and then retreat to the security of the lab and maybe she’d sleep on the cot in the back of the locker room. It wasn’t worth it to drive home. Was it ever?

From behind her, she felt Gil’s eyes on her back and she cursed him for watching so closely when he was so good at pretending he didn’t notice her in the first place, and could he see the scars on the inside of her body, the ones left behind when Derrick had held open her legs and shoved himself inside her so hard she’d bled into the mattress? She imagined the inside of her body, her cervix covered in an extra layer of tissue. Or was it more like the scars left behind by knives in the skin – flaky, rough, always ready to scab. Sex could be painful for her sometimes, if the angle was off.

Brass took the statements. Gil worked the perimeter. She took the scene, noting the one shoe impression in the mud, which was matched back to the father. And the groceries spilled on the pavement. Only one egg had broken in the fall. The paramedics had stepped on the bread. But the rain ended the collection as the evidence washed away and they did what they could but the Kirkwoods knew nothing would come of it.

Not for the first time, Sara wondered how her mother would have reacted. Would there have been tears? Anger? Or would she have blamed her daughter and evil and the darkness, that constant darkness Laura had sworn marked her? A barely remembered moment in the foggy memory of a bedroom haunted her. Large hands. Her mother screaming. A thump. And then nothing. She was a good girl, she promised. She’d always be a good girl.

The evidence clerk took the bags and the jars and Sara walked the bullet to Bobby herself. And then, while the techs did their jobs, hers was done and she could feel Gil lurking and she couldn’t look at him but she couldn’t go home and he wouldn’t let her stay, so she fled. Fled to the closest bar and sat in the dim lighting and ordered tequila because tequila took the monsters away. It flowed freely until she couldn’t quite see straight and when Mandy came up to her and offered to drive her home, Sara accepted. When they fell into Mandy’s bed, a tangle of arms and legs and fingers pushing into damp places, Sara let herself forget the shadows at the door. Later, while Mandy slept, Sara dressed and walked out into the bright light of the Vegas day, squinting against her hangover and the jumble in her stomach that had nothing to do with her hangover and everything to do with the Kirkwoods and memories that had followed her from Modesto to Harvard and now to Vegas and not even physics and forensics could keep the demons from the door.

So she walked back to the bar where she’d left her car and drove back to the four walls of her apartment and showered with fresh lemons and changed – another plain t-shirt and a clean pair of jeans and she opted for boots rather than sneakers. A shot of tequila with a breakfast consisting of a bagel and soy cream cheese. She wanted to paint. Purple maybe. Purple. And then she was back at the office, sucking on a butterscotch candy and reviewing Hodges’ findings. Mandy walked past. Smiled. But said nothing.


End file.
